Pompeii discovery sheds light on classical mysteries
A 'new' Villa of the Mysteries has emerged from the excavations at the Pompeii archaeological site, officials said.
The newly found residence has a large banquet hall frescoed with a cycle of paintings depicting initiation into the Dionysian Mysteries, CE Report quotes ANSA.
The site's well-preserved, world-famous Villa of the Mysteries takes its name from a depiction of the same initiation of a bride into a Greco-Roman mystery cult.
Excavated in recent weeks in the central area of Pompeii, the new room shows this frieze at almost life-size, or a 'megalography', just as in the Villa of the Mysteries, which was discovered over 100 years ago.
The large fresco sheds new light on the Dionysian Mysteries in the classical world.
Archaeologists have christened the dwelling with the frieze 'House of Thiasus', referring to the retinue of Dionysus, the God of wine-making.
The fresco decorates the room's three walls that do not look out onto the garden and shows Dionysus's followers, dancers, female huntresses, and satyrs with pointed ears.
At the centre is a mortal woman who, through the ritual, is about to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus.
"For the ancients, the Dionysus followers expressed the wild, indomitable side of women; the opposite of the 'pretty woman', who emulates Venus, the goddess of love and marriage, the woman who looks at herself in the mirror, who 'makes herself beautiful'," said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the archaeological park.
"Both the frieze of the house of Thiasus and that of the Mysteries show the woman suspended as if oscillating between these two extremes, these two ways of being female in those times".
